A lot of members of the media have bought into the Clinton spin
that the delegate count doesn't matter at this point, because
everything will be decided by superdelegates. But the fact that
Obama has a solid lead among pledged delegates means that at the
end of the primary process, while Obama will still need to convince
superdelegates to support him, he will not require as many superdelegates as Clinton will. So far,
superdelegates have been divided in their loyalties, and there's no
reason to assume that this trend will change, or that they will
decide to vote in one bloc at the convention. Some might be swayed
by Obama's arguments for why he should be the nominee, while others
might be swayed by Clinton's. But division among superdelegates
would mean a win for Obama.
Although all delegate math is extremely rough right now, I will
use some numbers at
Real Clear Politics to help illustrate my point. Right now,
Obama leads Clinton by 120 delegates overall. What this means is
that for Clinton to catch Obama, she would have to win over about
two-thirds of the remaining 340 superdelegates.
Of course, a lot could happen between now and the convention.
Perhaps Clinton could win a lot more of the remaining states and
eat into Obama's delegate lead, or raise so many doubts about his
candidacy that the superdelegates gravitate toward her en masse,
and that even the superdelegates who now favor Obama will start
flocking her way.
But the point is that the Clinton camp has been making the
argument that even if Obama brings his delegate lead into the
convention, it won't matter, because she can convince
superdelegates to get behind her. Such an argument, while
plausible, doesn't take into account the fact that she'll have a
lot more people to convince than Obama will.